A consultant litigation solicitor was a worker at the Stockport-based firm she is taking to the employment tribunal, an employment judge has found.
Gayle Roberts was hired by Bridge Law Solicitors after responding to an advertisement on social media. Admitted in 2000, Roberts had not worked in legal practice for ‘some 15 years’ when she was contracted by the firm.
She is bringing claims against Bridge Law Solicitors for unfair dismissal, unpaid wages and annual leave.
Shortly after Roberts signed the agreement, she and the firm agreed her services would be invoiced through a dormant company set up by her and her husband. No new contract or written agreement was prepared. Later, Roberts’ husband prepared her invoices as she was struggling to do so, the judgment said.
Employment judge Cookson, dealing with the preliminary issue of Roberts’ status, said: ‘It is surprising to me that two experienced solicitors should apparently have given so little thought to such a basic legal question as “what are the legal parties to this contract” and whether the submission of invoices in the name of different legal person was a fundamental change.
‘That is not…some specialist nuance of employment law they might not be expected to recognise. It is a fundamental and very basic question of contract law.’
The firm argued that as it was agreed that Roberts would be invoicing her services through a company, the agreement should be read as if it had been ‘expressly varied to be a legal argument between those two entities' - the company and the firm.
Finding Roberts was a worker, the judge said the contract was for ‘personal services and there was no right of substitution’ and the ‘dominant feature of the contract remained personal performance’.
He said Roberts worked for the firm in a way ‘similar to its employed solicitors’. She worked under the supervision of more senior lawyers, had a desk where she kept some personal belongings, and a space in the office cabinet for her files. The judge said she was ‘an integrated member of the…litigation team’.
He added: ‘The claimant was working for the respondent’s clients as part of its law firm. I find this was a relationship which would best be described as a flexible relationship, clearly lacking the key elements of an employment relationship but nevertheless something more than an ad hoc assignment to assignment series of engagements. In short, the claimant was a worker.’
